Debt Repayment
Our debt payment was pretty darn pathetic this month at $400. January and February will both have low debt payoffs, but then in March we should be back in the fight. We are changing the way we budget to deal better with credit cards and income. I’ll explain more about it soon. I’m really excited about the transparency and organization this change will bring to our budget, but it takes a couple months to get going.
Income
Regular: $2950 (after taxes) We’re not sure why this is $114 less than normal, but we’re looking into it. You can read more about our income here.
Etsy: $440 The month started well, but ended up being pretty much average.
Spending
| Category | Budget | Spent | Notes |
| Tithing | $349 | Our regular 10% tithe on our income. | |
| Rent/Mortagage | $0 | $0 | Hooray for the basement! |
| Gas | $500 | $473 | Hooray for being under on gas! |
| Utilities | $0 | $0 | Included in our free rent. My in-laws are so generous. |
| Groceries | $300 | $317 | After spending just $92 last month, we had to do some stocking up on staples like milk, cheese, tortillas, bananas, and sour cream. We also spent about $60 on 120 lbs of apples and 30 lbs of oranges. |
| Cell Phones | $20 | $20 | Our dumb phones on the archaic family plan are $10 each. |
| Clothing | $30 | -$13 | We actually came out ahead in this category. I returned some of the dress shirts I got for my husband for Christmas because they didn’t have a pocket on them, which is maddening for someone who uses his pocket all the time. We spent $21 on dry cleaning and $22 at the thrift store for winter coats for the kids next year, some other great deals on things they needed and some dress shoes for my husband. |
| Home & Office Supplies | $40 | $ 18 | Besides toilet paper, this includes $6.45 for the Dollar Shave Club, which we are loving by the way. This is really going to save us money over Mach3 Cartridges . |
| Entertainment | $0 | $0 | We hung out with ourselves and friends for free! |
| Health Insurance | $453 | $114 | Our high deductible plan didn’t meet the new healthcare standards, so we got a plan on Covered California. At our income level and family size we get a subsidy that makes our premium low. I left our old premium on the budget for comparison. |
| Dental | $22 | $122 | Our $22 dental discount plan and the last $100 for the dental work Mr. SixFiguresUnder endured back in October. |
| Lawyer Marketing | $450 | $368 | Back to the standard half-page ad in the monthly publication. |
| Lawyer Marketing Food | $25 | $16 | Missed a networking meeting this month and opted for a cheaper breakfast at another meeting. |
| Law Practice Expense | $60 | $45 | The $45 practice management software subscription. |
How did you do on your financial goals in January?
This is awesome and encouraging!!! Thank you for sharing this. Looking forward to watching you achieve your goals. BTW, that’s a lot of apples! 🙂
Thanks Karyn! We actually got more apples in February 🙂 We’ve been in a severe drought here in California (even though the rest of the country is snowed under), so we want to be prepared in case next year’s apple crop in unsuccessful and apple prices go sky high.
Our January was a little rough…but we had some truck repairs that we wouldn’t have known about if we hadn’t had the truck inspected to get the tags changed over. We also had a big hay purchase to make. Hopefully, the hay purchase will last us into next month….should.
Not a lot of debt payment going on but that will change this month and a lot more next month.
My income decreases a little in the winter months and my husbands insurance plan went up over $20 dollars and I was ill last month. He’s ill this month. luckily he’s salary.
It’s all good tho…we still have some of our side hustle income.
It’s frustrating to not make any progress but there are other ways to see progress…right!
Oh I have never heard of the dollar shave club, will have to check it out
The cool thing is that you can stop or start your subscription anytime. Since you get 4 blades per month, and my husband makes each blade cartridge last more than a week, we can subscribe for a couple months, then pause the subscription while he uses our little stockpile. I talked about it here.
$400 is greater than $0! You do what you can while taking care of the rest of the necessities of life.
It’s true. $400 is better than nothing, just not as much as we would like. Thanks everyone for the encouragement.
Stephanie, that must have been really maddening to have such a low debt repayment month, especially after your HUGE milestone last month. But try to give yourself grace because ANY number in the positive direction is something to be proud of! You should also be proud of the fact that because of your immense sacrifices, you are not currently obtaining more debt (housing) like most people in your shoes would be. Keep up the good work! And I had to laugh yet again because my husband is the same way–MUST.HAVE.POCKETS.ON.DRESS-SHIRTS! 😛
I had no idea they even made dress shirts without pockets! The funny thing is that the ones without the pocket were more expensive than the others. Weird!
Every penny counts. Don’t beat yourself up!
I love how specific this all is! I am so impressed by your debt repayment process with having kids- I have no idea how you guys do it. $400 is better than $0 for sure 🙂
Gracias Tejana! 🙂 I’ve never done debt repayment without kids so I don’t know the difference! I am impressed that you are doing it on your own! 🙂
January was actually a better month than expected for us. The beginning was slow and I missed a few days of work due to a back injury, but it finished out strong.
-We paid off our Office Depot account that was at 0% interest for 6 months. We used this account to purchases a much needed new computer. Ours was almost 9 years old. Total $542.65
-We paid $600 towards student loans bringing the total down to 9,015.98.
-Our Rent, Cable and Cellphone stayed the same. Our Insurance went down $10 a month!!! Our electric went up almost $20, but we think it was due to the weird weather in Northern NV and Christmas lights. I am working on getting it back down to $85 this month.
-We signed up for an American Express in December to take advantage of several free marketing schemes they had going on. One of those was a free membership to Amazon Prime!! We have been loving watching movies and such on it. We used the card once all month to buy my husband a ticket for when his grandfather was very ill. He was able to see him before he passed. The card is 0% interest for 18 months as long as you make monthly payments. We will continue to funnel money to student loans (that have interest) and worry about the AMEX later.
-We filed our own taxes with Turbo Tax. Luckily I have a very kind regular customer of mine who is a CPA with over 40 years experience. He helped me the few times I was stuck and I was able to get what I feel was a maximum refund. We will put all, but a small amount of the refund to student loans. What we aren’t putting towards that will go into savings for a vet visit that should be coming up in March.
-Our pantry challenge went swimmingly. We spent right at $50 to eat for the month. We only ate out once per week. We stocked back up on some needed things on February 1 and spent $125. I think February will be a great month debt payoff wise.
Total Debt left- $9015.98 (@ 5.5-6.5%) $1485 (@ 0% we aren’t even counting this as debt at this point due to lack of interest. We actually have the money to cover it, but figured it was better served going towards something with interest)
Sorry for the long comment, but I also want to ask about the clothing budget. Do you budget that every month and roll over what you don’t use? or was that a just for January thing?
That’s awesome CeCee! I’m glad you shared all the details! I hope February is another great month!
Clothing is just January. It was very unusual to have returns (from December) that were more than we spent in Jan. We used to have our categories rollover into the next month, but when we decided to get serious about debt payment, we stopped letting money accumulate in categories and put it toward debt instead.
The dollar shave club is fantastic isn’t it? My hubby and 15 year old both shave and I love that we don’t pay a small fortune & I don’t have to worry about buying more before they run out!
Yes! We are loving it!